About ZekePrints – Where You Wear What Words Can’t Say

How It All Started

My name is Debrah Ann Arriola. I started ZekePrints in the fall of 2024 in Oakland, California. I’m not a fashion designer. I used to be a quiet, inward person who drew to breathe and wrote down what I couldn’t say out loud. I grew up in a family that didn’t really talk about emotions, so I learned to keep things inside. I knew that feeling of having too much to say and no idea how to begin.

ZekePrints was born from silence. After my father’s funeral, I came home and wished I had a shirt. Not a loud, flashy one. Just a simple black tee with the words It still hurts. Nothing more. A message not for the world to react to, but for myself to wear. It was not a cry for attention, just a quiet truth.

That moment made me realize how badly people need to express what they can’t explain. Driven by that feeling, I spent months learning the craft of printing, determined to create something tangible—something people could wear to say what words couldn’t. And so I built a brand that helps people express what they feel, even if they never say it out loud.

What We Believe In

ZekePrints was never meant to chase trends or seasonal collections. We don’t follow what’s popular. We follow what’s personal. Our goal is to create quiet, meaningful designs that feel honest. Something you wear when you don’t want to explain yourself, but still want to feel understood.

We run a made-to-order model. That means nothing is printed unless someone orders it. No warehouse full of unsold stock. No pressure to mass produce. Just one shirt, for one person, with one true message. When you place an order, that’s when the process begins. Our team of 15 people in Oakland includes printers, illustrators, and fulfillment staff. Each order is created carefully from start to finish, ensuring quality and purpose with every piece.

This approach lets us reduce waste, maintain high standards, and focus on what matters most: the connection between the person and the product.

Turning Feelings Into Fabric

Right now, we focus on t-shirts and sweatshirts. That’s all we need to carry meaning. In the future, we may expand to hoodies or other items, but only if they still match the quiet spirit of the brand.

Every design begins with a feeling we observe or share. It might come from a sentence in a customer’s email that resonates with us, a line from someone’s journal, or even a moment of silence that doesn’t have a name. We don’t design for decoration. We design to translate emotion. We pick fonts and layouts the way a writer picks their words—carefully, deliberately, with weight behind them.

Take our first shirt, It still hurts. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t sad on purpose. It just existed. Like the kind of grief that stays in your bones. That shirt still guides how we design today. Simple. Honest. Deeply human.

How We Make What We Make

We use premium blanks from Bella+Canvas, a US-based company known for ethical production and high-quality fabric. We never source from vague or unknown suppliers, and we do not use dropshipping.

All of our printing is done using DTF (Direct-to-Film) technology, which offers durability, softness, and incredible detail. Each item is only printed after a customer places an order. Once we receive it, we move through the full process—printing, quality check, packaging, and shipping—all from our small facility in Oakland, California.

We believe that the story on the shirt is only as powerful as the integrity behind how it’s made. So we take our time, work with care, and ship only what’s needed.

Who We’re Here For

ZekePrints isn’t for people trying to stand out. It’s for people trying to feel seen. Our customers are often introverts, deep feelers, or people who have gone through something they don’t talk about. They want clothing that means something, not just something that matches an outfit.

When you shop with ZekePrints, you’re not buying fashion. You’re choosing a message that’s yours. You’re picking a phrase that speaks when you can’t. Every shirt is made just for you, with no excess, no trend-chasing, and no pressure to fit a mold.

We hope to offer more than a product. We want to offer presence. Understanding. A quiet kind of connection. If you’ve ever kept a message in your drafts, or paused when a sentence hit a little too close, or wished someone understood without asking—then ZekePrints might be exactly where you belong.

Thanks for supporting a small business with a big heart.
We’re proud to print stories like yours.
— Debrah & the ZekePrints Team